After the War
by JennieMac
Summary: A family deals with life, love and Survivor's Guilt.
1. The Story, Again

JK Rowling owns all these characters and is filthy, filthy rich. I own only this particular plot and any characters I may have invented, and I am not any kind of rich. No copyright infringement is intended. -JM

"Daddy, I want to hear the story again," Victoria whispered from the doorway of her mum and dad's office. Her mum had warned her not to make noise and wake the baby, but the house was so quiet this afternoon that she could be sure of her dad hearing her even if she whispered. She waited, slouching against the doorway, kicking one bare toe against the doorjamb and bouncing up and down on the ball of her other foot.

Her dad was hunched over his desk only a few feet away, his forehead resting on the palm of his hand. He twirled an eagle-feather quill in front of his face, his eyes out of focus and staring past the quill at the wall in front of him. He'd been in here all afternoon, in the office which grew dark as the sun wheeled around to the west, but he hadn't put on any lights. Victoria knew her mum wouldn't be pleased that she was disturbing him, but he rather looked like he needed disturbing.

He hadn't heard her. She tried again, louder: "Daddy!" Her dad dropped his quill and lifted his head. He smiled at once: Victoria was dirty from head to foot, having played outside with the neighbors' children (Muggles, but quite nice ones) all afternoon. One of her knees was skinned, a smudge of dirt sullied one freckled cheekbone, and strands of her flame-red hair were slipping out of the neat plait her mum had fixed for her that morning.

Victoria grinned back at her dad, and he held out his hand to her. "C'mere, love," he said, and Victoria ran to him, jumping onto his lap and kissing his cheek, making him laugh. He caught her under the arms and settled her so she was sitting on his lap with her legs tucked under her, facing him. "What've you been doing out there, eh?" he asked, rubbing at the smudge on her cheek with his thumb.

She waited to answer until he was quite done cleaning her face. "We played in the sand pile," she said, forgetting to whisper, "And then Mummy gave us sandwiches, and then Rick let us play with his new bike for a little bit, and Daddy, I almost rode it without someone holding the back. I almost did."

"That's great," her dad said. He was still smiling, but only a little bit, not in the knowing way that most adults smiled at her. That was one of the things Victoria liked about her dad: he always talked to her as if she was a grownup, too. He always asked her opinion about things, and he never, never just let her win when they played games, like other dads did. The wizard-chess set he had gotten her last Christmas came out almost every night, and she had yet to beat him at it. But someday, she would.

"Hey, have you thought about what you want for your birthday?" Victoria's dad asked. Victoria was going to turn five in two weeks, on July 31.

"Well, I've been thinking," she said. "And I still can't decide." Five was an important birthday; it meant that one was very nearly a grownup. Asking for a doll or a paint set or a new set of robes just didn't seem quite right.

Her dad frowned. "That is a problem." He appeared to think about it for so long that Victoria had to grab his quill off his desk and begin tickling his ears with it, to make him laugh again. Daddy's ears always got very red when he laughed, which he didn't do enough lately, or when he was angry, which he hardly ever was. He batted the quill feather away from his ears and tickled her too, a little bit, on the tummy. She squealed.

"Would you like," he asked, grabbing her around the middle as he stood up, "A bike like Rick's next door? So you can ride it to your Muggle school in the fall?"

"I don't know, Daddy..." Victoria dissolved into a fit of giggles as her dad swung her around and around the room. Her legs flew out in front of her. When her dad finally set her back on the floor, she staggered, dizzy, and had to catch at his shoulders for balance.

"Or how about a new broomstick?" her dad asked.

"I don't need a new broomstick, I've got your old one," said Victoria, still out of breath. She was already quite tall for her age, and her dad had told her that as soon as she was as tall as the broomstick, he would teach her to ride it. It couldn't be long now: she measured herself against the top of the broomstick every day, and she was fast gaining on it. There couldn't be another broomstick in the world as fast as her dad's, anyway.

"Well what then?" he asked.

Victoria looked into his eyes, blue like hers; he was kneeling on the floor next to her. "What would you like to give me?" she asked.

He looked at her very strangely then, and Victoria thought, just for a panicked second, that she had said quite the wrong thing. Her dad's eyes were glassy and she thought she saw his chin quiver. He moved suddenly, giving her a crushing hug that knocked her breath out, nearly. "I'd like to give you the whole world," he said. "Just the world the way it used to be. That's all, my Vic."

Usually her dad called her Tori, her favorite nickname. Story Tori, he called her, because she loved to tell and hear stories. He only called her My Vic when he was having a Down Time. That's what her mum called it when her dad didn't want to talk to anybody or eat anything, just wanted to sit with his head in his hands, in a dark room. There had been many Down Times lately. Especially since Harry was born.

"Daddy," she said, wanting to talk about something else, suddenly, wanting him to laugh again. "Will you tell that story again?"

Her dad broke away from her. "What story?"

"The story you were telling those men the other night. The story about Harry Potter. You never told that one to me, and I..."

She didn't know how, but she had said the wrong thing again. Her dad sat back on his heels, his mouth slightly open. The room seemed very dark, suddenly, and his eyes were shadowy and deep, and his hands on her shoulders had gone icy cold. He looked, and felt, like a ghost.

"Daddy doesn't want to tell that story again, darling," said Victoria's mum.

Mum was standing in the study doorway, her arms folded across her chest. Her hair was disheveled, bits of baby food spotted her blouse and denim skirt, and she had stuck a pencil behind one ear: all sure signs that the commotion in the study had disturbed her while she was working. That was never good. At the sound of Mum's voice, her dad seemed to relax all at once; at least, he let go of Victoria's shoulders and allowed her to step back a few paces. He was winded, like he'd been running, and he put a hand to his forehead.

"But why, Mummy?" Victoria asked. "Why don't you want to tell it, Daddy? You told those men-"

"It doesn't matter why," said Mum. "And we haven't got time now, anyway. You need to get into your bath."

"A bath?" Victoria almost whined. "But why, Mummy? I'm not dirty..."

"Because I want you clean for dinner, that's why," her mum replied, walking into the room and lighting one of the lamps with her wand. "Grandma and Grandpa are coming."

"Oooh, Mummy, really? Can I go with you to meet them? Can I please go to the train with you?"

"No, you can go down the hall and draw your bath like I told you."

"But I don't want a bath, I want to see-"

"Victoria Molly Weasley." Her mum's voice was hard and flat, her eyes narrowed.

Victoria said not another word; she turned and fled at once down the hall. A minute later, her parents heard water running into the tub.

Victoria's mum turned to her husband, who had climbed again into his desk chair. She grinned. "I'm getting rather good at playing the Bad Cop around here, aren't I?"

He smiled back, but the smile was watery and vague. "Hey, you even scared me that time." He picked up his quill again and ran his fingers along the grain of the feather. "I thought she was in bed the other night. When they came. I didn't think she'd hear."

"Me too."

He cleared his throat. "Are you done for the day?"

She rolled her eyes, but the man did not see it; he had turned back to the desk and was again resting his forehead on his hand. "Yeah. Harry finally decided to go down for his nap, and I managed to get that last case report done. Just in time for a weekend with my parents."

"Good," he said.

The young woman frowned at him. Something was definitely wrong; a weekend with her parents was most definitely not "good." She walked over to the desk, slipped her arms around her husband's neck and rested her head on his shoulder. He was studying the blank parchment in front of him and frowning. "How's it coming?" she asked.

"It's not," he grumbled, catching her hands in his own and bringing each, in turn, up to his lips for a swift kiss. "The words just won't come."

"Don't worry," she said, almost whispering. "They will. If I know my Ron-and I think I do-you will find the words to tell this story." She paused. "You loved him too much not to."

"I don't know," he said.

"Well I do," she said, straightening up and ruffling his red hair with her fingertips. "And when have I ever been wrong?"

He frowned up at her. "Do you want a list?"

She laughed softly and leaned down to kiss his lips. "No, I want you to have at least a page done by the time I get back here with-" another eye roll "-the in-laws."

Before Ron could reply, a piping voice sounded from down the hallway. "I'm taking my bath, Mummy!"

Ron's wife smiled again. "Watch them for a bit?"

"Yup." He nodded.

"Sit with her while she's taking her bath."

"Uh-huh."

"And if Harry wakes up-"

"I know."

"Kay. Bye, love." Another quick kiss, and she was gone.

He had left the bathroom only for a minute, he told himself. The sounds of his daughter's splashing and soft, echoey singing reached him in the hallway. He had taught her an old favorite of his, "Ninety-Nine Flagons of Firewhiskey on the Wall," something for which he was likely to catch hell when his wife came home, just like he and his brothers had caught hell for singing it at The Burrow. At the moment, he didn't care. He shuffled across the hall and stood in the doorway of the baby's bedroom for a few moments, then walked over to the crib.

His son lay sleeping under a pale blue blanket, thumb in his mouth. Ron studied the child. This was no ordinary Weasley: this one would have more of his mother in him. The nearly-two-year-old boy's sandy hair had finally begun to thicken and curl in the last few months, and his eyes had long ago faded from baby blue to soft hazel. An embroidered plaque above the boy's crib, a gift from his Aunt Ginny, featured his name, Harry Albus Arthur Weasley, in rainbow colors, surrounded by bunnies, hippogriffs, unicorns and flowers.

The little boy's face was flushed, and traces of tears remained on his cheeks from his latest bout of crying. This discontented child cried almost continually, or so it seemed to his father: so different from Victoria, who, as a baby, had been content to lie for hours alone, amusing herself with the sound of her own voice, as she was doing now while she took her bath. There was nearly always a stream of uninterrupted chatter from Story Tori, whether or not she had anyone listening to her. Little Harry was different: needier, perhaps. More helpless.

Ron wondered, as he reached into the crib to brush a sweaty curl from his son's forehead, if he'd ever have anything in common with this child. Harry was smart as a whip, that was certain; his first word, uttered at the age of barely twelve months, had been "Fly." He'd said it while watching his sister zoom around the backyard on her toy broom. Tori loved to fly already, and was also quite smart; she could already read and couldn't wait to go to school in the fall.

Ron backed away from the crib, trying not to wake Harry. He wished he could think of a way to tell his story, Harry's story, the story that had haunted him for years and that he was trying so desperately to write, so that his children would understand. He wished, more than ever, that Little Harry's namesake was still around, to tell the story for him.

Hermione perched on the edge of her daughter's bed, tucking the covers around Victoria. The child snuggled down under the warm blankets, squeezing her stuffed orange Beater's bat (a gift from Uncle George), her red hair spread out over the orange flannel of the pillowcase. Everything in the room was orange, after Tori's and Ron's favorite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons. Hermione prayed that the girl's sense of color-scheme would change as she grew older.

"Did you have a good time tonight, with Grandma and Grandpa?"

"Yes, Mummy."

"Did you like the present they gave you?" To Hermione's chagrin and Ron's delight, Victoria's early birthday present from her Grandpa Granger had been an assorted box of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, including some very familiar two-color Skiving Snacks and a few Canary Creams, both of which Hermione had refused to let Victoria eat.

"Yes. Mummy, can't I try the Canary Cream? Dad's eaten them lots of times, he told me..."

"All right, but mind you do it in the backyard and not in the house. I don't want feathers all over. And be careful the neighbors don't see you." Hermione paused, smoothing the blanket. "What were you talking about so long with Grandma tonight?"

"Oh," said Tori, and grabbed the corner of her blanket, pulling out some of the frayed threads. "She asked me if I could do any magic yet. I thought it was silly of her, wasn't it, Mummy? Because I'm not old enough at all yet, and I can't do anything besides the stuff I do by mistake, like when I'm angry or something. You have to be eleven to do real magic, don't you?"

"Yes," said Hermione, "You have to be eleven and at Hogwart's. You're quite right."

"Then why did she ask me? Wasn't it silly?"

"Well, darling...Grandma often gets a little nervous around magic and wizards. There was a bad time, a little while ago, where it wasn't safe at all to be around wizards and witches. Especially for Muggles like Grandma and Grandpa. For a long time they couldn't even come to visit me, and I couldn't go home to them for the summer, the last few years I was at school. It was a bad time, that's all."

Victoria was quiet, steadily fraying her blanket. Her mother studied her face: so serious. She was so like her father, this one: carefree and joking one minute, showing thoughtful, startling insight the next. Sure enough, Tori continued, "Was it the same Bad Time Daddy was talking about the other night? When the men came?"

"You were supposed to be sleeping, miss."

"I know." Tori shifted a bit under the covers, reached out both her hands and touched her mother's hand in one of those spontaneous, affectionate gestures that still took Hermione's breath away with their sweetness. "I know I was, Mummy, and I'm sorry, really. But Daddy is in a Down Time, I know he is, and I heard him talking to the men and I wanted to know what he was saying."

How to explain to a child? Hermione tried. "Tori, Daddy remembers an awful lot about that Bad Time before you were ever born, when all the scary wizards were hurting people. Daddy remembers things about that time, awful things, that he wishes very much to forget. Trouble is, people won't let him forget."

"Why won't they? Is it because of Harry Potter?"

Hermione gasped, and tried to cover it with a cough. "Yes, it is. Harry Potter was quite a famous wizard, you see, and...and Daddy was his best friend."

"And you were his friend too."

"Yes," Hermione answered, her voice far away and small. "I was." She shook herself, then reached up and brushed the hair off of her daughter's forehead, planting a kiss there. "You sleep now, all right?"

"All right, Mummy."

Hermione turned out the light and lit the night-light with her wand, leaving the door open a crack. She stood outside her daughter's room for a little while, listening until the girl's breathing had slowed to a calm rhythm. She went softly to Harry's room, then, standing in the doorway and studying the sleeping lump of her son. Harry had played happily with his grandfather after dinner tonight, and for once had gone to bed quietly: no tantrums, no crying. She smiled at him in the dark and blew him a kiss, leaving his door open as well.

Her parents were installed on the pullout couch in the living room, her dad already snoring loudly enough to vibrate the floor boards. At the end of the hall, one more room remained lit.

Ron had been so quiet all through dinner; luckily, her parents had been too occupied with the children to notice. Hermione knew he was thinking about the Ministry visit four nights ago. The fools had, as usual, been compiling a report for some official State document, and could just as easily have looked up the official record of That Night's events. But they had much rather hear it from a direct eyewitness, as they had explained to Ron, leaning forward in their chairs. They had much rather hear it, they said, from a friend.

So he had been forced to relive the whole thing again. Voldemort's defeat. And what had happened to Harry. And what it had all cost.

The bedroom door creaked a little as it opened. Even if she had been meaning to enter the room unnoticed, she couldn't now, he thought, she couldn't sneak up and play that hateful game on him, that game where she pretended to talk about other things when all the while she was leading him back around to what was really bothering him. God, he was tired of it. Ron silently ground his fists into his knees to drive out the thoughts, even as they pressed in on him: Pretend you're tired, Don't let her start talking to you.

He didn't know where those thoughts came from, sometimes. He'd been fighting them ever since that night at the Ministry, that foolish night in their fifth year when the six of them, underskilled and overconfident, had taken on a dozen or more Death Eaters. Of course, with Harry leading them, they couldn't have failed, but Neville's nose had never been the same, and Hermione still had fleeting pains under her ribs sometimes as a result of the curse that had almost killed her.

He himself...he shuddered to think about the brain that had wrapped its tentacles around him and left him with thoughts...such horrible thoughts, not only visions of pain and torture, but unyielding cynicism and deep depression and psychotic hallucinations. All the Dr. Umbly's Oblivious Unction in the world would not get rid of all that the brain had given him. Nothing he had seen since, even the horrors of their sixth and seventh years at school, could compare.

Hermione kicked her shoes under the bed and sat down with a deep sigh. The room was silent for a moment, and then he heard her crawling across the bedspread toward him. He didn't move as she slipped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you too," he answered, then cringed. It had sounded awful, like an automatic response, something he really didn't mean. Even though it wasn't. He did love her, down to his very soul. He turned to face her, putting his own arms around her. "I do love you. Don't forget that, all right? Even though I might go a bit batty writing this thing?"

She smiled, seeming to relax a little, now that he was talking, at least. "Darling, you've always been a bit batty."

"Har har." He lay back on the bed and covered his face with his hands. "Do you really think I can write it? And get people to understand? The truth, I mean?"

Hermione stood up again and began changing into pajamas. "What did I say this afternoon? I'm never wrong about these things, so what I think is that you should just shut up and do as I say, and get the damn thing done."

Ron peeked at her from underneath his hands; her back was to him, and she was pulling her pajama top over her head. He grabbed the pillow from her side of the bed and threw it at her; it beaned her on the head just as her pajama top fell down over her shoulders. She whirled around, but he was lying back with his hands behind his head, whistling at the ceiling.

"Oh, you're in trouble for that one," Hermione said, her eyes narrowing.

Ron grinned. This kind of trouble, he could definitely use more of.

HARRY MY FRIEND

by Ronald Weasley

INTRODUCTION

I don't know how to begin telling this, unless I start with That Night. The details you'll already know, you can pick up a hundred different books and they'll all tell you the same thing: Harry Potter defeated Voldemort, caused him to lose his wizarding powers and become a mortal human being who is now rotting away in an ordinary prison cell. In the process, seventeen-year-old Harry Potter died. What the books won't tell you is what it all meant. The extent of the sacrifice that Harry made. Harry, who had just taken top grades from his final exams at Howarts. Harry, who was starting a brilliant career as an auror. Harry.

Saying his name is painful now, as painful, in its own way, as saying Voldemort's name used to be. Voldemort is not what he once was; he is now only Tom Riddle again, a Muggle. A mortal. My wife and I named our son Harry. He is now almost two, and he will grow up never having to know (I hope) the kind of fear and pain we all lived with for so long. And still, his name is painful to me. Because, I know.

I know as well as anyone else how important Harry's sacrifice was. I lost my mother, my father, and two of my brothers, in the space of two years, to Voldemort and his followers. I lost friends, and many of my friends lost family. We lost people, people we loved, to a man who cared no more for human life than he cared for other people's pain. He twisted and perverted the art of wizardry, at which he had enormous talent, into a quest to beat death.

And that is where Harry bested him. The Prophecy stated that Harry would have a power which Voldemort knew not. No one knew what this power was, but not one of us dreamed that it would have nothing to do with wizardry at all. Nothing to do with who could cast the better curse or throw the quicker hex. It would have to do, instead, with simple human love.

For all Voldemort's power, he was still afraid of death. When push came to shove, he would not lay down his own life for the sake of his cause, or for his followers, nearly all of whom died defending him.

Harry did not fear death. When the last moment came, and he saw what he had to do in order to defeat Voldemort, he only turned to me and said, "Don't forget me." He was sad, and full of regrets about the life he'd never get to lead. But he was not afraid to lay down that life to save his friends.

Many call him Hero, or the Boy Who Lived, or The Great Harry Potter. I call him only Harry, my friend. I miss him terribly. And I want to tell his story, so you can know him the way he really was. He was always uncomfortable with the extra attention he got because of his scar, and I know this book would only cause him to squirm, like he used to do when people stared at him. Harry, wherever you are: I'm sorry, mate. But if I don't finish writing this, Hermione will murder me.

CHAPTER I

We were eleven, and we rode in the same compartment on the train to Hogwarts...


	2. Godzilla

Disclaimer: You'll be happy to learn that J.K. Rowling still owns most of these characters, except the ones I made up. No copyright infringement is intended.

Ron shuddered awake in the dark when he heard the faint cry from down the hall, and as always, it took him almost a full minute after waking to remember where he was. Sussex, he told himself: the little white house with the green trim, which did not look quite large enough from the outside to hold four bedrooms. The peeling yellow paint, the Muggle neighbors, the Muggle school his children attended until they were old enough to go to Hogwarts, the clock which had once been his mother's hanging in the kitchen, all five hands even now pointing to "bed."

As his breathing slowed and he felt Hermione's warmth in bed beside him and he remembered where he was, there was silence. He glanced at the bedside clock: 3am.

Then he heard it again: his younger daughter's soft whimper, barely audible. The sound was half-strangled, coming from far back in her throat, followed by a quick sniff, then a series of gentle sobs muffled into her pillow. Mattie was having a nightmare.

For each of the Weasley children, the nightmares had come differently.

His younger daughter, Mattie, wasn't like either of the others had been. Tori and Harry could whisper or shout their problems to the world and be rid of them in short order, but Mattie was more introverted than her older brother or sister, biding in silence, letting her fears linger and fester and grow out of all proportion. There weren't many fathers who would have seen through the serious, patient, calm façade of this little girl, but Ron had learned to recognize the way she pressed her small lips together at the breakfast table after a restless night, the way her brow would crease and she'd silently wring her hands when something was troubling her. He recognized the signs because he'd seen them before. Mattie was her mother, all over again.

And because he recognized this, Ron had been waiting for Mattie to come to him, to share her nightmares with him when she was ready. She'd come back from a sleepover party at the neighbors' two weekends ago with her small brow furrowed, silent and jumpy and secretive. "Okay," she'd said, when he'd asked how the party was. Hermione had frowned and said that maybe Mattie had been too young for a sleepover party after all, even if it was only next-door. She'd given Mattie some toast and marmalade and let her sleep for the rest of the day, and no one had said another word about it.

But Hermione hadn't seen what Ron had, hadn't heard the faint whimpers coming from the last bedroom down the hall every few nights. She hadn't been waiting, as Ron had, to find out what was troubling Mattie, because in the daytime Mattie was perfectly normal and calm, flying around the backyard on Tori's old toy broomstick, giving her orderly rows of stuffed animals school lessons in the drawing room, painting pictures and playing games. She was her usual placid, controlled self, and Ron knew he could only wait to find out what the stifled cries in the middle of the night meant; he could only wait for her to be ready to tell him.

Their eldest, Tori, hadn't needed any encouragement to share her nightmares, even at Mattie's age. Back then, Tori's small, quivering form would be hovering around their bedroom doorway before they heard a sound from her, before they even knew she'd had a bad dream. They'd look up and there she'd be, clutching the doorjamb and bouncing one foot against the other as she did when she was nervous. She'd wait for one of her parents to smile and beckon her over, then she'd creep up to the bed and crawl in, settling herself between her parents, still clutching her stuffed orange Beater's bat, and whisper her nightmare into the dark, waiting for her mother's comfort.

For it was Hermione who dealt with the children's nightmares in the beginning; there were times, especially when Tori was very young, when Ron wouldn't even hear her, when he'd sleep heavily right through her whispered nighttime confessions, only to wake in the sun-drenched morning to find her snoring on the pillow next to his, her mouth slightly open, her freckled face flushed. Hermione was always awake before the two of them, and she'd be reading in bed, a heavy, dusty book balanced on her knees as she stifled a giggle into the back of her hand, explaining in a whisper, _The two of you just look so funny, both lying there snoring with your mouths open._

As his daughter grew older, Ron learned to wake the moment she touched the bedcovers, to reach out and take her hand when she crawled, sniffling, into bed with them. It happened less and less often after her brother and sister were born, but Ron learned to be awake and listen with his full attention for the brief time it took Tori to explain her nightmare and fall back asleep, her slow, calm breaths sounding in time with her mother's.

Harry was a different story. Even as a child younger than Mattie was now, he'd had too much pride to creep into his parents' bed after a nightmare. Instead, Ron and Hermione would be woken, groaning in protest, by the muffled thumps of their son kicking the wall beside his bed and driving his small fists into his pillows, trying to beat the nightmare out of existence.

All that was required in Harry's case was for Ron to stumble half-asleep into his room and sit down at his side; Harry would throw his sweaty, trembling arms around his dad's neck and howl his fear and frustration out. The boy eventually cried himself back to sleep, his dad stroking his sandy curls and whispering, _It's all right, little man,_ and Harry would wake the next morning with no memory of anything so undignified having happened. Ron and Hermione took it in turns to calm Harry's nightmares, for the simple pleasure of enjoying the caresses the boy would have deemed "yucky" in the daylight.

But Mattie always wanted her dad.

It was her dad who'd woken tonight. And tonight, some instinct told him that it was time to stop waiting for her to come to him.

Frowning, Ron pushed back the covers and sat up. He slipped one foot down onto the floor, feeling around for his discarded T-shirt, while glancing over at Hermione. His movement had half-woken her; she lifted her head, brushed a stray lock of hair away from her eyes and squinted at him, making the same inquiring noise from the back of her throat that their daughter had just made down the hall.

Smiling, he leaned over and planted a kiss on her forehead, her hair tickling his nose. "S'all right," he whispered. "I'll be right back."

Her head dropped back onto the pillow with another small murmur as he leaned over to collect his shirt from the floor. A few moments later he was padding from the room and easing the door closed behind him.

The night-lights along the hallway floor, bewitched to light up when anyone came out of their room, glowed a gentle orange against the carpet. He crept by Tori's room first; through her half-open door he could hear the ten-year-old snoring, and he glanced into the dim bedroom to find her deeply asleep, her silky red hair spread riotously over her pillow, her long limbs poking out from under the bedcovers in all directions. Grinning, he pulled the door shut and moved on.

Next was Harry's room; putting his ear to the tightly closed door (KEEP OUT flashed at him in neon-colored letters from a large sign, messily affixed to the door with entirely too much Spellotape) he caught the faint whirring and clicking of the boy's model airplanes and broomsticks, probably still racing about the ceiling in tireless circuits as he slept.

Mattie's door, the third in line, had fallen slightly open, the yellow glow of another nightlight showing through the crack and casting a faint glow into the hallway. Ron put his hand on the doorknob and heard another soft whimper from within, followed by an even softer sniffle. He couldn't suppress a grin; like Hermione, Mattie always tried, and failed miserably, to stifle her cries.

He pushed the door open to find that four-year-old Mattie had kicked her pink bedspread onto the floor; it lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed. Her nightgown was plastered to her legs, her hands bunched into fists, her pillow a tangle of curly golden-brown hair as she buried her face in her arms.

"Hey kiddo," he whispered from the doorway.

Mattie sat up at once, wiping at her face with closed fists and looking around at him with damp, red-rimmed eyes, her chin quivering just like Hermione's always did when she was trying not to cry. She took a great, shuddering breath as Ron crossed the room and settled himself on the edge of her bed.

"Oh, Daddy," she whispered, and let the tears go, burying her face in his T-shirt. He felt the wetness seeping through to his skin as she sobbed, and he smiled faintly as she clung to him. He stroked her hair, tangling his fingers around the curls, as her sobs tapered off into hitching gasps, then stopped altogether.

"Now," he said, when he was sure the storm of crying was over, "What was it about?"

She mumbled something into his chest, her thin voice muffled by his T shirt. It sounded like 'Ionteloo.'

He pulled her back, hands on her shoulders, and made her look at him. "Sorry?"

"I can't tell you," she said, dropping her eyes and wringing her hands in her lap. Silent tears were still tracing paths down her cheeks.

"Why not?"

"It's…" She clutched at his shirt. "It's too scary."

"Oh." He sat back from her. "I understand now," he said, wiping at her face with his thumbs and nodding his head.

"You do?"

"Um-hmm. You think that if you say it out loud, it's going to be even stronger and scarier than before. You think that if you say it, it will come and find you."

She looked up, open-mouthed, and let her hands fall back into her lap. "How did you know?" she whispered.

"Because I used to do the same thing." He paused. "I used to be afraid to say the name of the thing I feared most. Not just me: the whole world used to be scared of saying one word."

Her face registered the kind of shock usually reserved for reactions to her brother's more foul language. "You used to be scared of things?"

Ron allowed himself a chuckle, and ruffled Mattie's hair. "Present tense. I _am_ scared of things."

"Even nightmares?"

"Absolutely." Mattie just stared at him, seemingly awestruck, and Ron chuckled again. "Being grown-up doesn't mean you're never scared of anything, hon."

"Oh." Her face fell, and she stared down at her hands, which had begun to twist in her lap again.

"But I know a secret," he said.

"What?" Her shining brown eyes caught his blue ones.

He leaned in close, to whisper in her ear. "If you name it, it won't scare you any more."

She pulled back, fixing him with a gaze of cock-eyed skepticism of which her mother would have been proud. "That's not true," she whispered.

"Sure it is. Here, try it. What was your nightmare tonight about?"

More hand twisting. "I can't…"

"Sure you can. You can whisper it, if you like. Say it very softly, so only I can hear."

Her eyes met his for another instant, and then she leaned close. Her eyes shone with tears and her chin trembled as she said the dreaded word:

"God…God…Godzilla."

It was fortunate that Ron wasn't looking directly at Mattie during her horrible confession, or she would have seen him bite his lip to hold back a yell of laughter. As it was, his face was perfectly serious when he drew back and looked her in the eye. "You had a nightmare about Godzilla?"

She nodded, her bushy hair falling into her face, took a deep breath, scrunched her face up, and let it all out in a rush: "Yes he was walking down our street and smashing lampposts just like in that Muggle movie that Candy from next door showed me when I slept over," she paused to take a breath, "And he looked in my window and his eyes were yellow, Daddy, and Harry's model planes were flying around his head and he was batting at them, and then," another long shuddering breath, "he was breathing fire just like a dragon, just like in that animal book on Mummy's bookshelf that's in with the books all the way at the top that I'm not supposed to look at but I did anyway cause Harry was, and my bed was on fire, and then he picked me up in his mouth and Oh Daddy! It was so scary." She was breathing hard and her eyes were wide and shining and her lips trembled, but she did not cry again, only sat there clutching at his hand and staring over his shoulder into the middle distance.

He waited.

Finally she spoke again. "But it's not scary now."

Ron smiled. "I knew it wouldn't be."

"But…" she wrung her hands again, and bit her lip, and again looked so much like her mother that his heart squeezed in his chest and his smile broke into a wide grin. "I was so scared…before," she said.

"I know you were. But you gave it a name. You said it out loud for someone else to hear. And that broke it up, that made it less scary."

"Huh?"

He took both her hands in his. "Voldemort," he said, slowly and clearly. "I used to be afraid of that word, even when someone else said it."

"You did?"

"Yeah. That's what I was most afraid of. That's what my nightmares used to be. But once I gave it a name, and said that name to someone else, it just…broke." Ron was staring at the wall above Mattie's headboard, his eyes glazed. "It broke and it didn't scare me. Not like before." He blinked and looked down at her, at her shining brown eyes and her halo of curly hair. "Can you say it again?"

"Godzilla," she whispered, her voice trembling.

"Again," he said, squeezing her hands.

"Godzilla," she said, in her normal, piping voice, her eyes blazing and determined.

"Excellent," he said. He leaned close and whispered, "It's even a bit of a funny name, isn't it, when you really think of it?" He widened his eyes and stretched his mouth comically to the side, and said, "God-ZIL-la," in a drawling, drawn-out way.

A smile bloomed on her tear-stained face, just a small one, followed immediately by that twisting of the mouth that she and her mother both used when they were trying not to smile. The smile won, and broadened into a grin as she widened her eyes in imitation of her father and drawled "God-ZIL-la." She broke into giggles for a few seconds after this.

"That's my girl," he said, and ruffled her hair again in the way he knew she hated.

Predictably, she batted his hand away. "Do you still have nightmares, Dad?"

"Yup. But they're mostly about spiders, nowadays." He gave a theatrical shudder. She laughed again, a real hearty laugh this time, and flung her arms around his neck and sighed, her tears forgotten. "Always name your fears," he said, staring away from her and breathing into her sweet-smelling hair. "Never be afraid to say them out loud. Promise me you'll always do that?"

"I promise," she said, and pulled back from him, rubbing her eyes again. "Daddy?"

He smoothed her frizzy hair back from her brow, only to have it pouf back into place over one eye. "Yes darling?"

She squirmed around so that her head was lying on the pillow again, her fists bunched up under her chin. "Will you stay here, until I fall asleep?" she whispered as she drew her knees up to her chest.

Ron leaned over and pulled the fluffy pink comforter off of the floor, tucking it around her again and planting a kiss on her forehead. "Of course," he said.

And in truth, he sat watching her long after she had fallen asleep, until the room began to lighten with the dawn and the shadows receded. He watched her chest rise and fall with long, even breath, her hands curled under her chin and her small, chubby face smooth and free from worry. He watched her without seeing her, after a while, as his eyes glazed over and he gazed into the middle distance, past her, past everything.


	3. Meeting Tom

JK Rowling owns all these characters and is filthy, filthy rich. I own only this particular plot and any characters I may have invented, and I am not any kind of rich. No copyright infringement is intended. -JM

"There's a letter for you, Tori," Mum said, dropping a parchment envelope onto the table next to Tori's bowl of porridge.

Tori dropped her spoon on the table and glanced up at her mum, a cautious half-smile playing about her freckled face. Mum smiled and nodded. "Open it, dear," she said. The brown post-owl on the kitchen windowsill hooted, clicking its beak, and Tori's Mum turned away to hand him a crust of toast.

The breakfast table had gone silent. Tori's eight-year-old brother, Harry, frowned at the thick, yellowed parchment of the envelope, the neat purple ink and especially the wax seal on the back, stamped with a curlicued "H," visible when Tori finally picked up the letter.

"Aw, no fair, Mum," Harry said, throwing down his own spoon. "Hogwarts. Why can't I go?"

"You're not old enough, twerp," Tori said, and stuck her tongue out at him. Harry bolted up from his chair, his hands curling into fists.

"Enough," Mum said, in her dangerous voice, and Harry froze. "Tori, you are not to stick your tongue out at your brother or call him names, is that clear?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Harry, you are to sit down this instant and wipe that scowl off. You are too young for Hogwarts, your letter will come in a few years. As will yours, miss," she added, turning to her younger daughter. Five-year-old Mattie sat across the table from her brother and sister, her wide hazel eyes turning from one to the other. At her mother's comment, she bent her frizzy head over her porridge again, stirring it rather than eating.

Tori was already tearing the letter open. It was indeed addressed to her: the neat inscription on the front read, "Miss Victoria M. Weasley, The Kitchen, 244 Longburne Rd, West Sussex." The return address above the "H" seal read "Hogwarts School." It was the letter she had been waiting for since before she was Mattie's age. She pulled the parchment from the envelope, grinning.

"Wha's going on..." Tori's dad had wandered into the kitchen. He grabbed a bit of toast from the stack in the middle of the table, ruffling Mattie's hair as he leaned over her; Mattie bore it patiently, continuing to stir her porridge. Harry continued to scowl. Dad caught sight of Tori's letter as he was stuffing the toast into his mouth. "Aw, brilliant..." he mumbled, his mouth full, and slipped an arm around Mum's waist. "Read it aloud, then."

"Swallow your toast," said Mum, frowning, but with a bit of a smile as she handed him a napkin.

Tori cleared her throat, throwing a tart glance at Harry which caused him to kick her under the table. "Dear Miss Weasley," she read. "We are pleased to welcome you to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The fall term will begin on September 1. Enclosed you will find a list of supplies required for first year students. The Hogwarts Express will leave from King's Cross Station, Platform 9 3/4, at eleven o'clock on September the first. We look forward to receiving your reply no later then August the 15th. Sincerely, Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress."

"Well done, dear," said Mum; she leaned over and planted a kiss on Tori's cheek. "I'm very proud of you."

Tori's face, by this time, wore a wide grin matched only by her dad's. "You know what this means, don't you?" he asked through another bite of toast. "We've gotta make a trip to Diagon Alley today. Not only is this your birthday, but you're going to Hogwarts."

"All right." Tori jumped up from the table, followed quickly by Harry, who sent his spoon flying in the process.

"I wanna go too," Harry said.

"So do I," said Mattie.

"Fine," Mum said, frowning across the table at Mattie's untouched bowl of porridge. "You can all go; give me a chance to catch up on a bit of work. But only if Mattie finishes her breakfast-"

"Noooo," said Mattie, squirming on her chair.

"-And Harry helps me with the dishes-"

"Mu-um..." Harry sounded barely older than Mattie.

"-So Tori will have time to write her acceptance letter to Professor McGonagall before you all leave-"

"Yes," said Tori, clasping the letter to her chest and starting for the stairs.

"-And Daddy will have time to call his publisher, who has been expecting to hear from him for the past three days, but whom he has been avoiding because he knows he's overrun his deadline on the new book by about three weeks-"

"All right, all right, woman," her dad grumbled. "Can't a man at least enjoy his breakfast..."

Tori didn't hear the rest of her dad's complaints. She took the stairs to her tiny attic bedroom two at a time, threw herself onto her bed, hunted around under the bright orange bedspread for her lap-desk, and once she had found it, tore open the letter again, ripping the envelope a bit in the process.

She read her letter over at least three more times before setting it and the book-list aside. On a new piece of parchment, she wrote:

Dear Headmistress McGonagall:

I am very happy to accept your invitation. I look forward to becoming a student at Hogwarts School. I will see you on September first.

Yours,

Victoria Molly Weasley

She read it over a few times, found it satisfactory, and sealed it up in an envelope. She was still writing the return-address on the envelope when an energetic, high-pitched chirping sounded from the hallway. The chirping grew closer and closer until a tiny, very excited owl buzzed into the room and landed on the bed, turning a somersault and stumbling over his own spindly legs in his enthusiasm to get to Tori. She laughed as Pigwidgeon, her dad's old owl, righted himself and held out his tiny leg for Tori's letter.

Tori laughed, said, "All right, you nutter," and tied her letter to his leg. Pigwidgeon, a tiny saw-whet owl whose enthusiasm frequently outstripped his usefulness, was normally confined to his perch atop the refrigerator, but eagerly ventured down for very special deliveries, as this letter definitely was. No sooner was Tori finished tying a double-knot in the twine than the owl had shot out her open window like a feathery tennis ball. By the time she made it to the window to watch him, he was only a speck in the distance, his wings beating like those of a fluffy Snitch.

She chuckled and watched the owl disappear into the cloudy distance. She sat down at her desk and continued to gaze out the window long after he had disappeared, fascinated by the approaching storm clouds. Tori had always loved thunderstorms, and loved to watch them coming more than anything: the smell of rain, the crisp electricity that crackled in your hair and the distant rumbling of thunder, all made her heart pound a bit faster. She gripped the side of the desk as she watched the clouds and found her fingertips in contact with a heavy book.

Looking down, she saw the plain brown cover of her dad's first book, the one he had written when Tori was very young: "Harry, My Friend." This copy was tatty and well-worn; Tori had read it over and over, ever since she had learned to read, it seemed. She didn't remember ever seeing her dad working on it; it seemed as if the book had always been there with them, a part of the family. Her hand lifted automatically, opening the book at random, and it fell open to Chapter 16.

Chapter 16 was the part of the book that scared Tori the most, and also the one she couldn't stop reading, lately. In Chapter 16, Harry Potter and Tori's dad and mum came face to face with the darkest Dark Wizard who had ever lived. The encounter was described in stark detail. Nothing was left out, not a word, not a gesture. It was horrible and beautiful, and Tori kept being drawn to it.

She was reading it now, while the thunder rumbled outside her window.

CHAPTER 16

I knelt in the mud, still holding onto my wand somehow. My hands were numb with cold and shock and the leftovers of the last Impediment jinx, but I had held onto my wand and that was something. My hand shook, but I managed to reach out and feel Hermione's neck for a pulse. She lay so still, so cold, and I believe I was weeping, but finally I felt a thumping under my fingers. She was alive again.

I looked up at Harry, and nodded. Though Harry's wand was pointed at Voldemort (or at the spot where we had last seen Voldemort; he had disapparated again), his gaze was shifting between me, Hermione, and the phoenix who lay dead beside us. Unquestionably, unmistakably dead. Harry kept looking at us. He seemed to be deciding something.

"Fools." The voice, the high, reedy, shivery voice of Lord Voldemort came from behind Harry. Just behind him.

"Look out," I shouted, but Harry was already turning to face him. Voldemort hit Harry with a curse as he turned; Harry only partially deflected it and caught the rest of it in the face. Blood sprayed from Harry's face; his skin had been split open in dozens of different places around his eyes and forehead by the curse. It dropped him momentarily to his knees. Voldemort stared beyond him, for a moment, to me and Hermione.

Voldemort's red eyes (I wish I could describe them; so inhuman, like he had never been, and would never be, a natural human being) narrowed at us. I trembled; I felt cold, so utterly cold. I gripped Hermione's arm with the hand which did not hold my wand, and I held on to both for all my dear life. Voldemort's eyes were on us, and he was wishing us malice; there was no worse feeling. "Fools," he said again, this time in a high, cold whisper. His thin mouth curled up at one end in a sneer. "Love is useless," he said.

Harry stood up again, brushing the still-flowing blood out of his eyes. "Leave them alone," he said...

Tori could not read any more. She would never read any more, not until she had met him. She decided this as the first really loud clap of thunder sounded, as the breeze lifted her orange bedroom curtains and carried the first drops of summer rain to her cheeks. She lifted her face to the storm and felt the sizzle of a nearby lightning strike. She hugged the book to her chest for a moment, then stood.

Her dad was still in the living room, talking on the fire. He must have finished with his publisher, because now he was kneeling in front of the greenish head of his sister, Tori's Aunt Ginny.

"Right," Ginny was saying, a disembodied green hand joining her head in the fire, scratching her nose, then disappearing again. "See you all in half an hour, then." Her head disappeared from the fire with a soft "pop;" the greenish flames flared up for a moment, then fell to cold ashes. Her dad stood, reached out a boot and scattered the remnants of Floo powder about the fireplace, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"Dad," said Tori. Her voice was smaller and softer than she would have liked, but what she was about to ask was no small thing.

Her dad turned. His red hair was slightly sooty in front from the fire. He saw her and grinned. "Where's your reply letter?"

"Pig took it," she said. "Dad, I-"

"Well, he should make it fine if he doesn't do any detours. Remember last time he took a letter?"

"Dad, I want to meet him."

Her dad frowned. "Meet who, love?"

Tori took a deep breath. "Him. Tom. You know." She bit her lip; her dad's face had gone completely white. "I want to go to the Department of Mysteries and meet him, before I go away to school."

"But...why?" Her dad was whispering now, hoarse, as if he could barely get the words out.

"I want to know, Dad." She clenched her fists at her sides. "I want to know how it was. And I want to know what you went through. I want to...understand." It was lame, and she knew it, but it was all the reason she had. She hardly ever stood up for anything, unless she was fighting with Harry; she was so easygoing with everyone except her brother, she hardly needed to be stubborn.

But this was different, and her dad saw it. She was standing up straight, clenching her fists like Harry always did. "All right," he said, still in that hoarse tone, and then he cleared his throat. "If you really want to," he said more clearly, " we can go today. But understand, it's not going to be pleasant. It's not going to be fun. And it may not answer all, or any, of the questions you may have."

Tori nodded.

"And if you change your mind, I'm not going to blame you, or even ask you why."

"I'm not going to change my mind. Just promise you won't change yours."

Her dad shook his head, a puzzled frown on his face. Tori's mum came up behind her just then, and Tori saw her dad's effort to clear his face so she wouldn't suspect anything. Tori knew, even without her dad widening his eyes at her and shaking his head, that she wasn't to say anything to her mum about their little side-journey to the Department of Mysteries today. She thought she'd be only too glad never to mention it to anyone.

"Aunt Ginny," called Tori, breaking away from her dad's side, pushing through the crowds in Diagon Alley and running toward her aunt. Ginny Weasley turned to her niece a bare instant before Tori had caught her in a bone-crushing hug, covering her front with Floo powder and crushing her packages between them.

"Oof," said Ginny. "I know I haven't seen you in ages, but that's no reason to punish me, girl."

"Sorry," said Tori, pulling away and smiling at her aunt. She was now almost able to look the woman straight in the eye, as Aunt Ginny had always been small, and Tori had her dad's height.

"Oy," Ginny said now, holding her niece at arms' length and squinting at her. "Are you really eleven already?"

"I am. I'm eleven today, and I just got my Hogwarts letter."

"As if I didn't know." Ginny reached into her pocket and pulled out a small parcel. She handed it to Tori and her smile softened. "Happy birthday. Go on, open it now. I want to see how it looks on you."

Tori began to work on the small package's wrapping right in the middle of the crowd in front of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes (where her aunt worked part time), witches and wizards jostling her elbows. She snuck a closer look at her aunt as she did so. Though Ginny was smiling, the dark patches under her eyes had grown since Tori had last seen her. There were lines around the woman's eyes now, lines Tori was sure she'd never seen before, and she seemed thinner; Tori had felt bony shoulder blades when they'd hugged. Aunt Ginny kept glancing around at the crowd and jumped whenever anyone touched her; her eyes did not rest on any one object for more than a second.

Tori got the last of the wrapping off, and the package sprang magically open in her hands. Inside was a beautiful gold chain, and on it a crystal pendant, entirely clear but for a pulsing white light in its center. "It's gorgeous, Aunt Ginny."

"I had one very much like it, when I was young," said Ginny, taking the necklace from its box and slipping it around Tori's neck. As she did the clasp in back, Tori felt the pendant glowing warm against her skin. The white light glowed brilliantly for an instant, then was replaced by a soft teal. Tori held the pendant up; the green-blue color was pulsing within the crystal, refracted on its surface into a million different shades. "It'll change color depending on how you're feeling," Ginny explained.

"I don't know what to say...thanks," said Tori, still staring at the glowing crystal.

"Hey, sis," said Tori's dad, coming up behind the two of them and dragging Harry by one hand, Mattie by the other.

"Ron," said Ginny. They embraced briefly, and seemed to frown at one another for a moment before turning back to the children. "And who are these two? They can't be my niece and nephew."

Tori's dad turned to her, holding her school list. Whatever he had been about to say stalled in his throat as he caught sight of the pendant around Tori's neck. He frowned, reached out to touch it, then drew his hand back to rub his chin instead.

"Don't you like it, Dad?" Tori asked. "Aunt Ginny gave it to me, isn't it gorgeous?"

Her dad turned to Ginny. "That necklace looks familiar, sis." His voice may have been a bit strained, but it could have been Tori's imagination. "Didn't you get one like that from H-"

"I thought she'd like it," Aunt Ginny answered, her eyes widening at her brother in a clear signal to drop the subject. "I thought she'd need it," Ginny added, in an undertone which Tori just barely heard.

"Well, what shall we get first, from your list?" Tori's dad asked, turning back to her as Aunt Ginny greeted Harry and Mattie. Tori thought her dad frowned briefly at the pendant hanging around her neck before he caught her eyes and held out the school list again.

Tori grinned to herself: her dad seemed almost as excited by this trip as she was. "How about my wand? I can't wait to get a wand."

"Ollivander's it is," he said, taking her hand. Ollivander's shop lay only a few yards away. A bell clanged inside as her dad opened the door and motioned for her to go in. Ginny, Harry and Mattie crowded in behind them, and they all stood awkwardly in the tiny, dim room, examining the old wands and long, narrow boxes stacked behind the counter, before Ollivander himself appeared.

He was a crookedly built old man who talked in a croak, but he seemed to remember Ron and Ginny quite well; at least, he remembered their wands. He recognized Tori straight away.

"I know you, my girl. Oh yes. You could be none other than a Weasley."

Tori nodded.

"No, you can never mistake a Weasley. And who are these two, please?"

Tori's dad smiled and winked at Tori before replying. "This is my son, Harry, and my younger daughter, Matilda, Mr. Ollivander."

"Mattie," said the girl, never taking her eyes off of Ollivander.

"Pleased to meet you," said Ollivander. "You both greatly resemble your mother. Especially you, girl," he said, pointing a crooked finger at Mattie. She ducked behind Harry, who scowled and rose up to his full height, which was, unfortunately, not very tall.

"Lo, sir," said Harry, reaching back and grabbing Mattie's hand; her bushy hair was all that could be seen of her, and it was quivering.

"Will they be needing wands too?" Mr. Ollivander asked.

"Just Tori today, sir," said Mr. Weasley.

At length, after trying out dozens of different wands, Tori was fitted with a very handsome one of yew, eleven inches long and containing, surprisingly, a golden hair from the mane of an infant unicorn. "You don't see many of these," Mr. Ollivander said, wrapping Tori's new wand in tissue and putting it in a box. "It was a beautiful golden filly I took this from, no more than a few weeks old. The mother nearly gored me through when she caught on to what I was doing. I don't know what possessed me, I almost never use them any more, but I felt I had to have a hair or two..."

The family backed out of the shop, nodding politely, while Ollivander continued his speech to the next group of customers. Ginny then took Harry and Mattie for ice creams while Ron and Tori completed the rest of their shopping, buying books, robes, potions supplies and cauldron. Their arms were aching from carrying all the packages by the time they were done, and Tori all but collapsed onto the table at the Leaky Cauldron, around which her brother and sister were sitting, he drumming his fingers on the table, she napping with her head next to her empty ice cream dish.

"All done?" Aunt Ginny asked, her own head resting wearily on her palm.

"Nearly," said Tori's father. "We have one more stop to make, don't we?" He caught Tori's eye, and she nodded, fingering the pendant at her throat. Whenever she thought of her imminent trip to the Ministry of Magic, the soft teal of the pendant became shot through with white streaks of what looked like lightning.

"Well," said Ginny, "I'm going to get these two home, they've had it. I'll take your packages along," she offered, reaching for Tori's cauldron, spellbooks and wrapped wand.

"Aunt Ginny," said Harry, "Can't we go to Uncle George's shop first?"

"No," she said, "He's busy enough, and you have enough fake wands at home to last you several years. Besides, poor Mattie's exhausted." She turned back to Ron and Tori. "We'll be waiting for you two. Is Mione home?"

"Yeah, she had some work to catch up on today. One of the elves in the halfway house won't stop drinking, and the others wanted to throw him out, but I think with Winky's help, she'll get them convinced to keep him," Tori's dad said.

Ginny chuckled. "All right, she won't mind me interrupting her for a visit, then. Ready, you two? Here, Harry, carry this cauldron, will you?" Aunt Ginny, Harry and Mattie stood and made their way to the nearest Floo entrance, staggering under all of Ginny's and Tori's packages.

"Ready?" Dad asked, laying his hand on Tori's shoulder.

"No," she replied.

"Let's go, then."

The corridor was dark and forbidding, close and narrow. For not the first time that day, Tori began to have serious doubts about what she was doing. The guard at the front desk of the Ministry of Magic who had inspected her dad's wand had looked at them nearly cross-eyed when he'd read their visitors' badges. "Victoria Weasley, Visit with Tom Riddle," Tori's own badge read. Her dad had one like it.

In the elevator all the way down to the Department of Mysteries corridor, Tori's heart had beat steadily faster, and walking down the corridor now she felt braced with adrenaline, as if she was not only watching a thunderstorm approach, but was actually anticipating being struck by lightning. She believed her hair actually crackled with electricity. As they approached the thin, somber-looking guard who stood blocking the Department of Mysteries door, Tori grasped her dad's hand, feeling suddenly like a very young child, afraid of a carnival ride. She clutched her new necklace again; it was now throwing silent sparks, like a roman candle, and was shot through with those little white lightning bolts.

The guard wore a badge of his own, which read "Perkins, Department of Mysteries." He frowned when Tori and her dad stopped in front of him, and his frown deepened when he read their badges. Luckily, Perkins seemed to recognize her dad.

"Weasley," he said, catching her dad's eye. "Are you mad ? How old is she?" He pointed to Tori in a way that made her face and ears go red. "You can't-"

"I have a right to be here," Ron interrupted him, "and so does my daughter. You will let us pass, or I will bring it up with your supervisor."

"My supervisor's the Minister of Magic."

"I know that. He's also an old mate of mine from school."

Perkins blanched. He studied his booted toes for a moment, then looked up, huffing and standing slightly to the side, so that Tori's dad could reach the doorknob.

"Thank you so much," said Tori's dad, moving to open the door.

"There's not many I'd open this door for, understand," Perkins said, his voice a bit higher than it had been. "But you, I guess you have a right to see him, no matter how nutters he's gone. After all-"

"Thank you," Ron repeated. He turned the knob.

"Hey," Perkins said, as Ron and Tori moved through the door. He leaned toward them; his face was only a few inches from Ron's. "Any chance you could come back here tomorrow, autograph your book for me? I'm a big fan."

"We'll see," Ron mumbled, and shut the door in his face.

Tori and her dad found themselves in a perfectly round room. They were surrounded by doors identical to the one they'd just walked through. As soon as Tori and Ron had stepped away from the entrance, the walls of the room began to spin, faster and faster, until all the other doors were a blur around them. Tori was reminded more than ever of a carnival ride. She grabbed her dad's hand again, a little more firmly than before. He squeezed her hand back, then said in a loud voice, "Tom Riddle, please."

Instantly the room stopped spinning, and a door directly in front of them popped open. The room beyond was dimly lit.

"Ready?" Ron asked again.

"No," Tori answered again.

"Right, let's go then."

The room they entered was as tiny as a closet, dimly lit by what looked like an ordinary electric bulb suspended from the ceiling. The half of the room they walked into contained only one wooden bench, pushed up against the wall. The walls were plain gray concrete. In the middle of the room was a wall of perfectly clear, foot-and-a-half-thick glass with only a tiny opening on the bottom. The part of the room closed off by the glass wall was clearly a prison cell: it contained only a bare cot (no pillow, no blankets), a dirty toilet and a sink. A plate of food resembling the porridge Tori had eaten for breakfast, but smelling decidedly unlike porridge, lay on the floor of the cell just inside the tiny opening. They didn't even give him a spoon to eat with, Tori realized. Nothing decorated the bare gray walls in the cell. The light from the single bulb filtered through the glass, but the cell was still filled with shadows.

In the midst of one of those shadows crouched a small human figure.

Tori drew in her breath sharply when she saw him, and hugged herself as if cold. The figure was bald and obviously quite old; its skin was perfectly smooth, but when it moved out of the shadows and crouched in the center of the cell, it moved in a jerky, tentative way, as if its bones were brittle. It was thin, as thin as a starving person, as thin as someone who hadn't eaten in years. Tori thought of the infant unicorn from which her wand's core had been taken, when she saw the figure's spindly legs, and doubted that the prisoner would be able to stand.

"You," the creature in the cell hissed, its voice high and cold, just as her dad had described it. It was staring at Ron. Its eyes were slitted and slanted downward, somehow reminding Tori of a snake. She turned to look at her dad. Ron's lips had pulled into a tight line; otherwise, his face was expressionless as he stared back at the creature.

"You!" the creature suddenly shouted, and sprang from its crouch to throw itself at the thick glass. It plastered its face and its whole body against the barrier. Tori realized it was half-naked, and would have been embarrassed for it had she not been so utterly horrified. It had stepped in its porridge, she noticed. Its misshaped foot was coated in the stuff, but it did not notice; the thing was clawing at the clear glass now, trying to climb it, trying to reach through it.

Ron had stumbled back when the thing had moved; he now came back to stand at Tori's side. Tori had not moved; her feet felt rooted to the concrete floor and she doubted whether she would ever be able to move again.

The thing in the cell began to laugh now. It laughed in a high cackle. Tori had no doubt that the thing was insane, horribly, irrevocably insane. The thing began to speak again, in between loud cackles. "I know who you are, you, yes I know you. You were with him. Oh yes. You and the ugly Mudblood. You loved her, didn't you, you fool? Loved her even after I killed her, even after she was useless. Wouldn't leave her side, not even when your precious friend needed you. And now he's dead too, the fool..." The thing turned to Tori, and she felt weak and shivery as its eyes fell upon her. The eyes were red, she realized with a terrified jolt, dark blood-red. "No one's ever brought me a child before, did you know that? No one's ever been that foolish, don't want their children to see me, the horror, the circus freak. That's what they made me, put me in a glass case. Are you not afraid of me, girl?"

Tori opened her mouth. "No," she said. In fact, she had never been more terrified, but somehow her voice came out smooth and calm. Somehow, she looked him in his horrible red eyes and answered him, just like somehow, years before, her dad had held onto his wand. "I'm not."

The thing replied by cackling louder than ever, and capering all about its cell. "You know who I am, don't you, girl? I'm Lord Voldemort, and if I could I'd kill you, I wouldn't hesitate."

"No, you're not," Tori said. Her voice was still calm, though her heart was hammering fit to burst out of her chest. "You're Tom Riddle. It says so there." She pointed to the small plaque on the wall outside the cell. Her hand was numb and did not seem connected to her arm.

"Tom Riddle," the thing repeated, in a horrible singsongy voice. "Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle." It stopped its capering and crouched to the floor again. "The name of my filthy Muggle father, I swore I'd never use it again. And you," and the thing pointed at Ron again, "Bringing your filthy, dirty, rotten little Mudblood's spawn here, to me-"

"Don't you talk to my father," Tori said. She had moved unconsciously, on numb feet, to block her father from the thing, so afraid that her whole body trembled but determined that the thing wouldn't insult her Mum and Dad any more. Her dad put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed; feeling flooded back into her limbs. She walked forward until she had reached the glass; she laid her palm on the glass where the thing's face had been. In the glass, she saw her own dim reflection, her face pale but steady; under her chin, the pendant glowed bright red.

The thing sprang at her again, plastering its face to the glass on a level with Tori's palm, but Tori didn't flinch. The thing hissed and growled at her, cackled and wailed, but she didn't move.

Finally it fell silent. "You really, actually don't fear me, do you, girl?" it asked, and for the first time, it actually sounded serious and sane. Its eyes had lost their fevered light; it was standing up straight and backing away from the glass.

"No, I don't."

"Why?" it asked, cocking its head to the side.

"Because," she said, "you're just a pathetic old Muggle."

The thing let out a cry of rage and began to throw itself around its cell. "Disgusting girl, half-Mudblood filth, I'd kill you if I could, I'd kill you with one flick of my wand, I'd torture you with pain like I did your father and your mother and all the others, I'd kill you, I'd bite you, I'd turn into a snake and slither out of this cell and find you wherever you sleep, wherever you are, however long it takes I'll find you and your children and-"

"But you won't," Tori said. "Because you can't. You can't even get out of this cell."

The thing descended into unintelligible blathering again, crawling back into its shadowy corner and staring from Tori to her father, malevolence in its eyes.

"Come on, Dad," said Tori. "Let's go. There's nothing to see, here."

Ron couldn't be sure, but he thought Tori changed that day.

She was the same happy, gentle creature as ever, on the outside, but there was something hard in her soul now too, something hard and unshakable in the core of her. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it was there as soon as they left the Department of Mysteries, it was there as they walked silently home again that night, it was there while she was eating her birthday cake and opening her presents that night, surrounded by her family. There was a hard, hot core in her, but it made the rest of her all the warmer, all the more glowing with kindness. Her goodbyes to her family on September the first were warm and tearful; she even hugged Harry and told him she'd miss him, and though he only grunted in reply, his eyes showed surprise when he pulled away from her.

"Bye, Dad," she said from the train window. She kissed him on the cheek as a grown woman would have, as her mother used to. It struck him, as it never had before, that his eldest daughter was quite beautiful. He looked into her eyes and found them the same soft, dark blue as ever, but deep within them there shone that hard spark, that hard core she would never again be without. She was not a child any more, he realized with a terrified start, as the Hogwarts Express chugged forward with a jolt. He let go of her hand and backed away to join the rest of his family, all happily waving to Tori as she went off to school.

And though no one but her Aunt Ginny would ever notice, the birthday pendant around Tori's neck, the pendant that Harry Potter had first given to Ginny Weasley many years ago, when they were young, never shone with quite the same shade of teal-green as it had when Tori first put it on in Diagon Alley; it always carried now, at its core, a sliver of hot, hard red.


	4. Dragon Heart

JK Rowling owns all these characters and is filthy, filthy rich. I own only this particular plot and any characters I may have invented, and I am not any kind of rich. No copyright infringement is intended. -JM

"Go, go, Gryffindor, Go, go, Gryffindor, Go, go, Gryffindor..."

If there was one thing Harry hated, it was Quidditch.

The fourteen-year-old Gryffindor boy was skulking under the bleachers of the Hogwarts Quidditch stadium, kicking at the clumps of grass and weeds that grew in the cool shade, scowling at the roaring crowd above his head. His hands were jammed into his jeans pockets, his chin jutting out. His sandy hair was, as usual, sticking up every which way, the ends curling just above his eyebrows and just below his shirt collar. Lately it had grown so long that, every time Headmistress McGonagall caught sight of him, her face tightened into the kind of disapproving look which clearly said: Cut that hair, boy.

"And that's Weasley, away with the Quaffle again, my gosh that girl can fly..."

Harry Weasley scowled and kicked a wooden support-post. At least here, under the bleachers and out of the glare of the clear-skied spring morning, he didn't have to watch his sister win another Quidditch match. Here, he did not have to deal with Tori's drooling fans and admirers, did not have to endure his friends asking if he could introduce them to her, or maybe put in a good word for them. Here, he was alone.

But, he reflected, leaning back against the wooden support he had just kicked and pulling out his wand, "alone" was not always good, either. Harry began pointing his wand at random dandelions: one by one, the weeds exploded in showers of white fluff, the tiny seeds catching in the wind and floating off across the grounds behind the stadium. Alone, there was time to think. And there were not many good subjects for thinking, at the moment.

The subject which came most immediately to mind, causing him to groan aloud and slide down the post until he was sitting on the ground, was his Mum's latest letter. It had arrived with one of the school owls at breakfast this morning, and had not been a howler--thank Merlin for that--but all the same, she had not been happy. "I must say I'm slightly disappointed by your mid-term grades. Harry, you are not working up to your full potential! You must spend more time studying and less time fooling around. Your OWLs are coming up next year..." And on and on. His Mum was, it seemed, obsessed with grades.

The truth was, Harry wasn't trying his best. But why bother? He would never catch up to the rest of them. He didn't think anyone realized how difficult it was being the only untalented member of the Weasley family. His dad: a best-selling author and former best friend of the Great Harry Potter. His mum: the cleverest witch in the world, and the most-recognized magical-creature-rights activist in Britain. His sister Mattie: such a gifted artist that Mum and Dad had debated sending her to a Muggle art school instead of Hogwarts; she had won more Art prizes already than Harry had ever heard of, and she was only eleven. His new younger brothers, Bill and Fred: only the cutest pair of red-haired twins the Wizarding world had ever seen, and besides that they could already make their crib levitate.

And then, there was big sister Tori. Queen Tori, he called her in his own mind. She was Head Girl, a champion Chaser and Quidditch Captain for a third year running, and had earned more OWLs than any other student in Hogwarts history except her own Mum. If that wasn't enough, Tori was beautiful too: tall and slim, athletically strong, she had the kind of coordination and grace that Harry only dreamed about. Tori had to practically beat the lads away with her broomstick, while Harry had to get dragged to the last Ball by one of Mattie's bucktoothed first-year friends.

Harry threw his wand into the grass beside him. The air around him was filled with dandelion fluff; he brushed it out of his hair and clenched his fists, pounding them against his legs. "And Gryffindor S-C-O-O-ORES," came the loudspeaker announcement, "Thanks to Tori Weasley..." The rest of the announcement was drowned out by the screaming crowd. "Go, go, Gryffindor, Go, go, Gryffindor..."

Watching Quidditch only made him think, painfully, of his first attempt to try out for the House team, as a second-year. He'd been trying out for Keeper, like his dad used to play; it was the position Tori always made him play when she practiced at home, and the one he felt most comfortable with. Nevertheless, the very first time the Quaffle came streaking his way during the tryout, he'd leaned too far to the side in an attempt to catch it, and fallen off his broom. He'd fallen nearly thirty feet, blacking out and waking up in the hospital wing with a slowly-healing collarbone and right arm, and a concussion. He'd barely climbed onto a broomstick again, after that day.

"Oy, Weasley."

Harry turned toward the voice, and tried not to cringe at the sight of Shea Donovan, his fellow fourth-year Gryffindor. Shea was the closest thing Harry had to a best friend at Hogwarts; the two boys had been close since first year, but lately Harry had found himself shying away from the friendship. It may have had something to do with the fact that Shea's older brother, Troy, was both Head Boy and Tori's boyfriend. Shea was already on the path to follow his brother to head-boydom: he was sure to make Prefect next term, and was already attracting attention from every girl in their year. Harry had to practically wave his hands in front of a girl's face before she'd notice him.

Shea walked toward him now, tall, burly and confident, everything Harry was not. Shea smiled easily, slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a couple of Honeyduke's candies. He tossed one to Harry; Harry caught it. A Toothflossing Stringmint. Harry hated those. He unwrapped it and stuffed it into his mouth, wincing as the mint lodged between two of his molars and started flossing.

Shea joined Harry under the stands, squinting in the dim light. "Why aren't you watching? It's a hell of a game," Shea said, leaning against a post and running a hand through his thick black hair.

"I don't need to watch," Harry mumbled, staring at his feet and trying to pry the Stringmint out of his teeth with his tongue. "I already know what'll happen."

"Not much of a sport lately, are you?" Shea stuffed more stringmints into his mouth, crunching down on the new ones and spitting out the old at Harry's feet. "Hey, you got that map handy? Me and Joe wanna sneak into Hogsmeade later, after the game, get some celebration sweets."

Harry reached into his pocket for the Marauder's Map, then hesitated, his fingers brushing the yellowed parchment. He squinted at Shea, who was again brushing his hair out of his eyes and grinning in that easy way. Did Harry really want to be involved in another Gryffindor Quidditch celebration? "Naw," Harry said, pushing the map deeper into his pocket. "Map's locked in my trunk, up at the castle. 'Sides, I reckon McGonagall's getting suspicious. She nearly caught us last time."

"Naw, she didn't," Shea said, backing away from his friend. "You're no fun, you. Aw well, we don't need the map anyway. Got the whole thing memorized, don't I?" He tapped his head, flashed a last smile and turned on his heel, disappearing back around the corner and into the stands.

Harry watched him go, then turned his back as his friend disappeared. He bent to pick up his wand from the grass, brushing bits of dandelion fluff off the handsome, if slightly short, eleven-inch maple wand with dragon-heartstring core. Dragon heart, he thought. Yeah, right.

A movement caught his eye, and Harry looked up. A huge, lumbering figure was emerging from the edge of the Dark Forest, a few dead rabbits slung over his shoulder. Harry grinned; Hagrid was the one person at Hogwarts with whom he felt completely comfortable, and Care of Magical Creatures the only class at which he consistently excelled. Hagrid passed quite close to the Quidditch stadium on his way back to his cabin, and, spotting Harry, he raised his gigantic hand in greeting.

Harry waved back and, pocketing his wand, jogged over to meet Hagrid. The huge man reached down and ruffled Harry's hair as the boy fell into step beside him; Harry groaned inwardly to think what his head must look like now.

"Ere, now, Harry. How are ye?"

"All right, I guess."

"You won't be jes 'all right' when I'm through," Hagrid said. "I've a project, for you."

Harry looked eagerly up at his gigantic friend. Although the half-giant was a little grayer around the edges and more wrinkled about the face than he had been when Harry's parents had known him, his eyes had not lost their twinkle, and they were twinkling now. "What's the project, Hagrid?"

"Litter o' baby nifflers," Hagrid said, his voice calm but his eyes never leaving the boy beside him, so as to catch Harry's reaction.

Harry did not disappoint. "Baby nifflers, Hagrid?" His hazel eyes had gone wide. "I've never seen any. How old?"

"Aye," Hagrid said. "Few weeks old, a litter of twelve. I'm weanin' them early, so's they'll be tamer, easier to handle. Thought maybe you'd help me with some o' the feedings, today, get 'em used to being handled by different people."

"Yeah," said Harry, hard-pressed to contain his smile. "Yeah, I'll help you." The Quidditch match was forgotten, as was his Mum's letter, for now.

"Ow! Hey, gettoff..." Harry grabbed at the fuzzy baby Niffler, which was clinging to his shirtsleeve and attempting to pick up his watch in its tiny, scoop-shaped beak.

"Ah, Harry, yer gotta take off anything ye don't wanna lose." Hagrid held a Niffler baby in each hand, while two more dived in and out of his long, shaggy beard.

"Forgot my watch," Harry said, finally prying the Niffler loose, unclasping his watch and stuffing it into his pocket. He set the Niffler carefully on his shoulder; it rooted around his ear for a bit before settling down in the crook of his neck. Harry carefully held the feeding-dropper up to the last hungry Niffler in the box--the smallest of the litter--coaxing the fuzzy baby closer with a cupped hand. The creature found the food and clamped its beak around the dropper while Harry gently depressed the plunger, letting the food into the creature's mouth little by little. The baby settled into Harry's cupped hand as it fed; Hagrid watched silently until the dropper was empty and the little fellow was safely asleep.

"Ain't that a new watch, Harry?" Hagrid asked.

"Oh yeah," Harry said, petting the baby on his shoulder as it dozed, and pulling the watch out of his pocket. "My Uncle Charlie gave it to me. We visited him, in Romania, over Christmas."

"Ah, Charlie Weasley." Hagrid smiled at the memory of Harry's uncle. "Still workin' with dragons, is he?" Harry nodded. "I remember he had a way with animals, like you do, Harry." Harry smiled, pleased that he was good at something. "Yeah, you're like him in a lot of ways. I wouldn't be surprised if-" Hagrid broke off as the Nifflers in his beard converged on his chin, taking it in both their beaks at once and biting down hard. Hagrid sucked in his breath and tried to prize the babies away from his face, while Harry laughed silently.

"They're all right, Nifflers," said Harry, still scratching the animal sleeping on his shoulder. "Hagrid," he asked, as the man disengaged the Nifflers from his face and set them down in the box with the rest of their littermates, "Are you going to keep all of these for classes?" He indicated the dozen baby Nifflers huddling together in their box. "Can some of them go...other places? Like, can you have them as pets?" he asked, cupping a hand around 'his' Niffler as it slept.

Hagrid shook his head. "I don't think yer Mum'd be pleased to be chasin' both yer brothers and a Niffler around the house."

Harry sagged. "I guess not." He gently tugged the baby off his shoulder and set it down in the box.

"How is Hermione doing with the twins, anyhow?" Hagrid asked, frowning.

Harry shrugged. "All right. They've started to walk now, and Mum says they get into more trouble than any of the rest of us ever did." His voice had gone rather flat. Harry disliked talking about his brothers. He didn't know why his parents wanted to go and have more babies when they already had three children almost grown. And twins, at that. Since Bill and Fred were born, his parents' free time had gone from rare to nonexistent.

"Ah, I can believe it. If they're anything like their dad and their uncles...I remember one time, back when yer Dad and Mum and Harry Potter used to-"

A series of shrill cheers from the Quidditch stadium interrupted Hagrid. Harry used the opportunity to jump up and back toward the door of Hagrid's cabin, with a last look at the baby Nifflers. "Sounds like the match is over. Gotta go, Hagrid; thanks for letting me help and all." With that, he was out the door and practically running back to the castle.

"Bye, Harry..." Hagrid's voice trailed off behind him as Harry jogged up the lawn and into the castle. He left the cheers from the Quidditch stadium behind, as well. He stuffed his hands into his pockets again and kept his head down as he stalked toward the Common Room. Why did everyone always have to bring up his Mum and his Dad, and Harry Potter, and his brothers and sisters? It was like he didn't even have a life of his own. Like he was invisible. If he disappeared, they wouldn't even notice...

"Here, here, what's this?" The Fat Lady blustered around in her portrait. Harry recoiled and rubbed his nose: he'd run headlong into the Fat Lady's portrait, jamming his nose square into her backside. She was gazing down at him, her face screwed up in intense dislike. "That's the third time this week you've done that, boy," she said. "Let's hear the password, and let's have you watch where you're going from now on, understood?"

"Chocolate Frog," Harry mumbled.

"Mmm-hmm," said the Fat Lady, swinging open and frowning after Harry all the way down the passage.

The Common Room was empty, Harry was thankful to see: the fire had burned low, and the floor and chairs were littered with students' scarves and cloaks, mittens and candy wrappers and bits of parchment. Harry heaved a great sigh, stood staring at the fire for several moments, and then turned and kicked at the armchair nearest him. He kicked rather harder than he'd intended: the chair didn't budge, but a bolt of pain shot up Harry's foot and leg, and he grabbed his injured toe in both his hands, biting his lip and cursing under his breath.

Something stirred at the window across the room: Harry looked up, and found the Common Room was not empty, as he'd thought. His little sister, Mattie, was curled up on one of the window seats, her sketchbook on her lap and her pencil in her mouth. Mattie was looking very baggy and sloppy in a pair of sweatpants and an old orange Cannons jumper which had probably once belonged to Tori. Her bare feet were tucked under her on the seat. Her frizzy hair looked as if it hadn't yet been brushed.

Harry scowled at her. He had really wanted to be alone: here, now, was one of his sisters, to spoil things again. "What are you doing here?" he barked at his sister.

Mattie blinked, then looked down at her sketch book. "It's my Common Room too, you know," she said. Her voice was small and wavering, and Harry sensed, from the way her shoulders slumped, that she was not really in the mood for a fight. In fact, walking a bit closer to her, he noticed that her eyes were red and puffy, and that several scrunched-up tissues littered the floor around her.

A change came over Harry instantly, though you would have had to look closely to see it. His face softened from a frown of resentment to one of concern; his hands came out of his pockets and lost their angry clench; his lips curled into a smile. He sat down on the window seat next to Mattie and put his arms around her. "I didn't mean it," he said, as she began to cry again and buried her head on his shoulder. The sketch book fell, forgotten, to the floor, and glancing down, Harry saw that she'd been drawing a beautiful sketch of a dragon flying over the Quidditch stadium. A Hungarian Horntail, it looked like, though she'd gotten the tail wrong: there were supposed to be twelve spikes, not ten. He'd tell her later.

Mattie sat up again after a few minutes, and wiped at her face with a tissue. "Now then, what's wrong?" said Harry, his voice businesslike.

Mattie sighed, leaning down to collect her sketch book. She slipped her feet back into her sneakers and said, simply, "I'm just very lonely."

"Oh." Harry sat back a bit, and considered this. Mattie had never been a social butterfly the way Tori was, but surely she had some friends? Harry tried to think of who he'd seen his sister hanging out with, but realized that most of the time, when he saw her, she was on her own. He looked up at Mattie now and waited for her to continue.

"I haven't really made any friends since I've been here. And you and Tori are so busy I hardly ever get to talk to you, and I'm a total dunce in all my lessons, I'm rubbish at magic. And Mum and Dad haven't sent any letters in a really long time."

"You're lucky there," said Harry. "I got one from Mum this morning, and all she did was twit me about my grades..."

"At least you're getting letters," Mattie said. "Mum never writes me because she knows it won't do any good. I'm hopeless at lessons." She stuffed her sketch book into her bag and stood up. "And over Christmas, she and Dad barely spoke to me. They're too busy with the babies." She rolled her eyes at the mention of "the babies;" Harry thought about just how hard it must have been for Mattie to give up her place as the youngest Weasley. "I'm thinking...I don't even want to come back to this school, next year. I'm thinking maybe I'll just go to that art school, like Mum wanted."

"I don't think you should," Harry said. "I'd miss you, anyway. And you're not the only one who's not brilliant at lessons. I'm..."

"Oh please, Harry," said Mattie, starting toward her dormitory. "You're, like, Professor Hagrid's pet student. You're really smart, you're great at magic, and you're a terrific flyer."

"Hold on," Harry said. "I'm not even close to a terrific flyer. I-"

"I know you never fly any more. But I don't know why. You were really good, Dad said so all the time." Harry looked his sister straight in the eyes, to see if she was lying. But she didn't blink as she continued, "If I had a talent like that, I'd at least use it. I'd fly all the time, every day." She turned her back. "No one even knows I'm here." She shuffled toward the Girls' stairway. "Sometimes I think I shouldn't even be in Gryffindor."

"You don't have to play Quidditch. There are different ways of being brave," Harry called after her.

"Yeah," she said, "and you and Tori have them all. And I have none."

Harry just sat, dumbfounded, for a few seconds. Then he lifted his head; his frown had disappeared. Mattie had almost reached the top of the stairway. "Hey, where are you going?" Harry asked.

"I'm going to my room," Mattie replied, her voice dull.

"I've got a better idea," Harry said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the Marauder's Map, the old, crumbling map his Dad had given him before his first train ride to Hogwarts. "Want to come into Hogsmeade with me? I'm thinking of going to get some supplies for the party tonight."

Mattie turned, frowning, and started slowly back down the stairs. "It's not a Hogsmeade weekend. And anyway, I'm not old enough..."

Harry shrugged. "What McGonagall doesn't know, won't hurt her. C'mere." He pulled out his wand and, as Mattie reached the bottom of the stairs, touched its tip to the old, blank parchment. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he said. Mattie's eyes widened as she watched the map gradually appear on the parchment, and her mouth dropped open when she caught sight of the tiny figures moving around the castle. Harry grinned, enjoying her reaction.

"Is that...Hogwarts?" she asked, leaning so close to the map that her nose practically touched the parchment.

"Yup," said Harry.

"And are those...secret passageways?"

"Yup," he said again, his grin broadening.

"Harry..." Mattie grinned up at him, her hazel eyes gleaming with a hint of mischief. The two of them looked very much alike at that moment, as they smiled at one another over the Marauder's Map. Harry could tell, from her expression of slowly-growing joy, that his sister had grasped the full potential of this map, and would be a willing accomplice in using it. "This is really beautifully drawn," she said, leaning close to the map again to study the intricate detail in which the castle was rendered. Mattie turned serious again as she asked, "Does Mum know about this?"

Harry scoffed. "Are you mad? Of course not. Dad gave it to me. And Mattie," he whispered, "You can't tell anyone, all right? This map has to be just between you and me."

Mattie nodded quickly. "Yes, yes, I promise."

"Shake on it?" Harry held out his hand and Mattie grasped it. They shook firmly, and then smiled at one another again. The two of them wandered out of the Common Room together, studying the map and whispering about mischievous possibilities. The Gryffindor Common Room was left empty, save for the ghosts, and the crackling fire which told no tales.


	5. The Color Line

JK Rowling owns all these characters and is filthy, filthy rich. I own only this particular plot and any characters I may have invented, and I am not any kind of rich. No copyright infringement is intended. -JM

My younger daughter, Mattie, squints into the firelight on this summer night, a small smile on her face, and I watch her.

Mattie is trying to sketch her pet kitten, the first pet she has ever had that wasn't first someone else's. She's named her kitten "Han;" he was a present for her birthday in May, from her father. Ron never has any problem thinking of presents for Mattie, though he's hopeless at shopping for anyone else. It's been like that between them since Mattie was a wee thing: Ron just understands her, and she understands him. Sometimes I wish I had the same talent.

Han is a gray tabby, three months old, and he is chasing a ball of green yarn back and forth across the hearth rug. I had been using the yarn to knit a scarf for Ron--magically, of course, I'm way too slow a knitter otherwise--but the clicking knitting needles and the green yarn dangling in midair proved too much of a temptation for Han, and it wasn't long before he had turned away from the store-bought toy Mattie got for him, and started chasing the yarn instead. Just like a cat. It makes me think of Crookshanks--who has been gone for many years now--and how he'd chase the gnomes in the Weasleys' garden when we'd visit them in the summertime.

Mattie couldn't resist drawing the kitten, of course; she fished her sketchbook out of her satchel as soon as he started wrestling with the yarn. She can't resist drawing anything she sees, come to that: I believe every member of the family, every friend, every corner of the house and of Hogwarts and of many other, only-imagined places, have been drawn by my daughter at one time or another.

Her full name is Matilda Jane Weasley, 'Mattie Jane' to her foolish mum and just plain 'Mattie' to everyone else. She hates 'Mattie Jane' but I won't give it up. She's my third child and my youngest girl, and I'll call her what I like, even if it's only in my own mind.

I am sitting on the couch across the room, tonight, and getting thoroughly tired of looking over case reports while I knit. I welcomed Han's antics as a pleasant diversion. I decided, in fact, that this was a perfect opportunity to study my youngest daughter...take stock of her, if you will. I like to do this, periodically, with each of my children--I have five, now--because it is actually frightening how fast they grow, and if you don't take stock every once in a while, you'll lose track of them entirely. Call it my own version of marking their heights on a doorway.

Mattie Jane is lying on her stomach on the hearth-rug, her long legs curled up behind her, feet entwined in the air and slowly rocking back and forth. She has her sketchbook on the rug in front of her and is frowning down at it and up at the kitten, in turn, her lips drawn into her mouth the way they always are when she's drawing. Mattie Jane and her sister Tori both managed to get their father's long legs without being gangly, the way he was. Mattie is more slightly built, but still has none of the awkwardness of a teenager, although she has only just turned fifteen.

Aside from the height, I must say she looks very much as her foolish mother must have looked at the same age: bright, intelligent hazel eyes. Curly dark blonde hair, which is both blessing and curse; tonight she has pulled it back into a long tail, save for one curly strand; Mattie twirls that one strand around and around one finger as she sketches. Also like her mother, she has teeth slightly too large for her face, and a slow, sly smile.

I turn back to my reports with a small sigh, beginning to feel the old familiar ache pressing beneath my ribs, the ache that will only get worse if I don't get to bed soon. But, I have to finish the reports.

I have to finish them, but I find myself looking back at my daughter, watching her work. She's inherited my concentration, thank Merlin. You could watch her for hours and she'd never know, lucky for me.

Mattie will sketch Han with pencils first, and then try him in watercolors later; just now, I fancy she is working out a color. That line has come into her brow, the one that cuts straight down between her eyes, the one which only appears on her face when she is trying to figure something out.

It's the color-line, as her dad says. Nearly every time Mattie Jane gets that line down the middle of her forehead, she's trying to work out a color. Last time I saw it, she was painting her dad's portrait, and trying to figure out the exact shade of copper-silver in his hair. In the end, she worked it out brilliantly; that portrait of Ron is one of my favorite. It hangs in the front hall.

Tonight, I think, she might be trying to work out how to blend the grey-gold glow of Han's fur with the bright leap of the flames behind him, the way the gray fur blended into the green of the yarn tangled in his paws, the red-brown of the carpet. The green, the gold, the red-brown...I close my eyes, trying to picture what Mattie Jane's final painting will look like. Instead, I see nothing but stars behind my eyelids, feel nothing but fatigue and that familiar pain in my chest. I press my fingertips to my eyelids, willing myself to last just a few more hours, at least till the boys are in bed.

Think of the devils, and they shall appear (to trample a cliche, as Ron says).

My two youngest boys come crashing into the room as unexpectedly as a tornado in January, yelling with all their might and completely destroying the peace before them. I open my reddened eyes in time to see the two five-year-olds jump on their sister, who tries to protect her drawing beneath her body as her brothers trample her into the carpet.

"Ow ow look out!" bellows Fred, the older twin.

"Mattie Mattie look out! It's gonna come in here any second-," chimes Bill, the younger.

"Oof," says Mattie, heaving herself off the carpet and toppling both twins to the floor. I see her look frantically around for her drawing, then, with a dark look at her brothers, extricate it from under one of the twins' shoes. They have crumpled her sketch and, I see with a sinking heart, caused her hand to slip and leave a thick red pencil-mark across the face of the paper.

Mattie turns to her brothers with fire in her eyes, and they leap to their feet.

"Look what you two have done," she says. Her voice is quiet, but her tone is hard, and her eyes are almost shooting sparks. Her nostrils flare and her ears go red.

"Sowwy, Mattie," says Fred, kicking at the rug and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Yeah, sowwy," echoes Bill, absently sticking a finger in his nose.

"Don't be sorry. Just go away," mumbles Mattie, turning back to her sketchbook. "I have to redo this now."

"But Mattie, we gotta tell you...um..." says Bill. The boy glances behind him; a low whine seems to be coming from the hallway, getting louder by the second.

"Boys," I say, in my best Mommy-voice. They both jump as though a drill sergeant has called them to attention. I never find it necessary to yell, as long as I can sound vaguely menacing. "What, exactly, is all that racket coming from the hallway?"

"It's um..."

"Well Mummy, what it is, is..."

They are interrupted by the high-pitched whistle of exactly what I feared: a noisy, twisting, screaming Weasleys' firework, which catapults into the room as though fired from a slingshot and whizzes its way toward the twins and their older sister. Pencils, papers and assorted limbs fly in every direction as the three of them leap out of its way; Mattie grabs each twin by a wrist and pulls them to the floor as the firework whistles over their heads.

I, not about to be unseated by a measly firework, ask, "Are you two into Daddy's tool shed again?"

"Well-" Fred jumps up and starts to answer, but is grabbed by an ankle and pulled out of the way of the careening firework just in time.

Han, forgotten in the commotion, hisses and jumps up onto a nearby chair, from which he watches proceedings with not a little bit of humor in his yellow eyes. I do the same. The spinning yellow firework skirts the room, seeming to scout for a good location from which to commence attack; five pairs of eyes follow it closely. It glows like a roman candle flame, leaving a bluish streak across the vision as it cartwheels over itself through the air, giving off an unbearable squealing.

And then, without warning, it is streaking across the room toward my face. I can't help letting out a little shriek as I flatten myself on the sofa, the pain in my chest returning with the sudden movement. I lie there huffing and clutching at my ribs; the firework whizzes over my head, just singing the ends of my hair, and begins banging at the window behind me.

"You leave my mother alone, nasty firework!" screams Bill, charging toward the couch and leaping up onto the cushion beside me. Fred is right on his heels, shaking his fists at the firework. I catch them both around the waist and fling them toward the door to the kitchen, ignoring the pain beneath my ribs for the moment.

"Go, go, it'll follow you," I tell them. And it does: someone has bewitched the firework to follow the boys wherever they go and make random swipes at their heads. When I find out who that someone is, they are in for it: I have my suspicions already, come to think of it. I must get on the Floo network to "Uncle George" first thing tomorrow morning.

The twins rush out of the room as one, wailing loudly all the way. The firework abandons its pounding of the window and screams after the two boys; their shrieks can be heard echoing through the kitchen and out into the garden.

"Boys," I call halfheartedly, raising a limp hand in their direction, and then turning the gesture into a wave. "Oh, your father will catch them, I suppose." I lean back into the sofa cushions, silently begging Ron to do just that.

"Owwww!" one of the boys screams, from just outside in the yard.

I roll my eyes and started to get up; my husband's voice stops me. "I've got them, it's all under control--oh bloody hell!" he yells from out in the yard. His exclamation is followed by a small scuffle and the continued whine of the firework.

Mattie and I grin at one another and exchange another eye-roll; I drop back onto the sofa and cover my face with my hands, groaning. "Between those two and your father," I say, "I'll be lucky to make it to forty-seven."

Mattie just nods and surveys the situation: she is kneeling on the hearth-rug, surrounded by broken pencils and tattered, crumpled sketches. "It was perfectly peaceful just a few minutes ago," she says, in her quiet way. "And then: enter Bill and Fred." She shakes her head again. "Sometimes I wonder if we're really related. They were adopted, right Mum? Right?"

"You were there the night they were born; you know better," I tell her.

Another loud squeal from outside--it could be either twin, or possibly even their dad, who has been known to scream like a girl on occasion--followed by the distinctive whine of the still-active firework, makes Mattie smile as she bends to pick up her scattered artwork. "Was that a Filibuster, do you think?" she asks.

"No," I say, my voice squeaky and faint despite my best efforts to sound normal. My breath comes in small gasps. "That was a Weasley's. Definitely a Weasley's."

Mattie looks up sharply; I sit up straight as best I can and try to force a smile, resting one hand on my ribs and bracing the other on the couch cushions behind me. I am trying to take deep breaths. I close my eyes, but my breath keeps hitching on me, not allowing me enough oxygen, so that it sounds like I'm panting. From the look on Mattie's face when I open up my eyes again, I can tell my face is screwed up in pain. It's not as easy to recover from these attacks as it was when I was younger.

"Mum, are you all right?"

I sit up straighter, despite the pain, and give a rather pinched smile. "Yes," I say, standing up and stretching my arms above my head, breathing slowly and evenly, as Madame Pomfrey taught me to do all those years ago when the injury was new. When I was just Mattie's age. "It's just the old pain. That's all."

"D'you want me to get your medicine?"

"No, I'll be fine. Just let me stretch." I walk around the coffee table and kneel next to my daughter, moving gingerly but relieved to find that the pain is receding, as it always does. "What have we got here, then?" I asked, pointing to her sketch of Han.

"Oh," Mattie says, and blushes. Her ears go red again. "Just some sketches I've been working on. I wanted to get them down in pencil first, and then I'm going to try them in watercolor." She rises to her feet and picks up Han from the chair, where he has been crouched wide-eyed, back arched. She cuddles the kitten under her chin; I can hear the creature purring.

"They're wonderful, darling." I am holding the half-finished sketch of Han. Although the paper is now crumpled and marred with the pencil-slash, I can see that Mattie captured the cat's rakish expression perfectly, and it's interesting how the flames behind him blend into the fur, which blends into the rug beneath...I can see how it will all come together in the end, even from this half-finished sketch. It will be an incredible finished painting. I look up at my daughter, again awed by her talent. Children never stop surprising you.

Mattie is blushing furiously, looking like her Aunt Ginny as she digs one toe into the rug. She picks up another packet of sketches from the floor, and holds them out to me. "Want to see more?"

I nod, and reach to take the precious papers. Mattie very rarely lets anyone see her work before it is "finished," so I am aware of what an honor this is.

The very first sketch I see is of myself. In it, I am bent over my desk, staring at case reports (I marvel at the detail; Mattie has copied the Ministry seal heading each page exactly, in miniature), my head in my hand. There is something in my own face, in this drawing, which I don't exactly like. Not to say that it isn't accurate: I'm sure that, when deep into my work, my face becomes that stony, my fingers that clenched. But to see it set down on paper, in stark detail...I look up at Mattie, who is biting her lip and staring at the carpet.

"Been laying into it pretty strong lately, have I?"

"Well..." Mattie shrugs quickly and tosses her curly head to one side, a mannerism borrowed directly from her dad. "I draw what I see, Mum."

"You certainly do," I say. I flip that sheet over and study the next one: Ron in the foreground, wrestling with Bill and Fred and about to be brought to the ground by them, by the looks of it; Ginny laughing at the three of them in the background. Ginny laughing is a rare sight, these days.

The next sketch is of my eldest son, Mattie's elder brother, Harry. He's eighteen now, just out on his own and fiercely protective of his independence. Mattie's sketch shows him looking dead-on at the artist; even in a pencil sketch, his eyes are intense and piercing. His arms are folded and he's scowling in that stubborn way he has; he looks just like Ron when he does that. Behind Harry, his elder sister Tori stands stifling a laugh behind one slender-fingered hand, mischief in her eyes, holding up the other hand behind Harry's head to give him rabbit ears. I burst out laughing. "Oh, Mattie," I say.

"Yeah, I know," she says, untangling Han's paw from the front of her blouse. "Let go, Han. Yeah, Harry's going to kill me when he sees that one. I just couldn't resist."

I look back down at the last sketch in the packet, still chuckling. The last sketch is of Ron and me. We are sitting on the bench in the garden, just smiling at each other. Mattie has "gotten" us perfectly. I don't know how else to describe this sketch: it's so simple, and so touching, the way we're looking at each other with perfect trust and love. I stare at it for a long time.

Mattie finally clears her throat and says, "Uh, Mum? Don't you like that one?" I don't answer. "I saw you and Dad out in the garden one day this spring, just sitting there and talking, and you looked so...I don't know. Happy. I just felt like I had to draw it. I hope you don't mind."

I shake myself and hand the sketchbook back to Mattie. "Certainly I like it. Of course I don't mind. You're very talented, sweetheart; I love it when you turn your talent on me." I study her for a moment more as she kneels back onto the rug, straightening her papers and collecting all her pencils, tucking her stray hair back behind her ears. I close my eyes. "It reminds me of another picture, that's all."

Mattie looks up; I open my eyes and meet hers.

"Another picture like that one?" she asks. "Where?"

"I'll show you. Just give me a moment." I turn away and walk down the hall and into my bedroom, trying to keep my breathing even. The pain is coming back.

I find the picture buried under a crumpled pile of Ron's shirts; his drawers are always a mess, but once you've learned his "organizational" habits, it's actually quite easy to find things. He still keeps this picture in its original heart-shaped frame, though he's destroyed most other reminders of those times. This photo was probably only spared because it doesn't actually feature Harry Potter, just me and Ron.

I gave the picture to him one Christmas, when we were still children: in it, Ron is sitting at a table in the Gryffindor Common Room and excitedly explaining a save he'd made in the Quidditch Cup game that day; I'm gazing at him with a goofy smile on my face. I've always loved the two of us, this way: just smiling and enjoying ourselves.

There wasn't much enjoying ourselves to be done, for the next two years after this picture was taken. Ron doesn't like to talk about that time. He's purged all the memories into his best-selling book about Harry Potter: all the memories of losing his brothers and his parents and his best friend. And almost losing his future wife.

I don't like to remember it either, come to think of it. Any of it. Especially that last day. But the memory is flooding back, as it always does when I am suddenly, forcibly reminded of it, and the pain is flooding into my chest stronger than ever. And I let it come.

It was Graduation Day at Hogwarts. Ron and I hadn't spoken in weeks; some stupid fight over something so trivial I can't remember it now. I had gone up to the Owlery directly before the Graduation ceremony, to send a letter to some wizards abroad who wanted to give me a job in their Foreign Ministry office. I thought the job was perfect: the best part was, I'd be away from Britain and Ron Weasley and everything that had happened over the last two years. Perfect.

I never sent the letter. I didn't expect to meet Lucius and Draco Malfoy in the Owlery. I didn't expect to be disarmed by them and Portkeyed to the Dark Forest, held immobilized and then forced to duel with the Death Eaters while Voldemort waited for Harry Potter to take his bait. Harry did eventually show up in the Dark Forest, having seen me through Voldemort's psychic connection with him. Ron was with him.

I don't remember a lot about that afternoon and evening...I do remember that it wasn't just dueling, what the Death Eaters made me do. That by the time Ron and Harry found me, I was near exhaustion, mentally and physically. By the time they found me, I was standing half-naked in the middle of a clearing and Lucius Malfoy was trying to convince Draco to throw a Killing Curse at me, that I was no longer important. Draco stood there trembling and nearly wet his pants; he couldn't do it. As much as I'm sure he hated me, he couldn't kill me. Lucius stepped in front of his son and raised his wand to me. That's when I saw Ron and Harry.

I only remember fragmented images, in those last few seconds. I remember hearing Malfoy say the words: "Avada Kedavra." I remember the flash of green light, and Ron's blue eyes as he watched me go down, and in the distance, far back, a clear note of Phoenix song. And then all the colors ran together.

When I woke up, I was crying. Or at least I thought I was crying; it turned out to be the Phoenix, Fawkes', tears in my eyes. Fawkes had woken me. Fawkes was dead, but I wouldn't find that out until much later.

I felt Ron's hand in mine when I woke; I can't say how I knew it was Ron's, because my eyes seemed glued shut. I was too weak to open them, too weak to move. I heard voices all around me, safe voices, Ministry voices. I felt someone lift me off the ground as easily as though I was a toothpick. The strong warm arms carried me for a long time, carried me out of the forest and back to the castle, and only when we had almost reached the Hospital wing was I able to open my eyes and see a flash of red hair above, see the stony, pale face and hollow blue eyes of the boy who had carried me so many miles.

When I woke up again, days later, Ron was still holding my hand. The moment I opened my eyes he told me the whole story. He told me Harry was dead, and so was Dumbledore, that Voldemort was gone and we were safe. "Safe:" he said the word as if it had no meaning any more. That day and ever after, he said the word "safe" with a wry little curl of his mouth. As if he knew better.

Madame Pomfrey told me later that no one could get Ron to leave me; when even my parents were forced to respect her request for "no visitors in the Hospital wing," she could not get Ron to leave. The look in his eyes made her leave him alone with me. He never left me the whole time I was there in that bed, clinging to life as stubbornly as I had clung to my foolish ideas during my seven years at Hogwarts. And he never left me again.

I can't remember in any more detail than that. Not that day. That is how it always comes back to me: fragmented images, strange colors, echoing voices. Vague pain. And curse me if I ever, ever tell my children about it. I will spare them that.

The twins and Ron are laughing outside. They must have brought the chaos under control, for now.

I square my shoulders and walk out of the bedroom carrying the picture of Ron and I when we were still innocent. I hand it to Mattie and she smiles immediately, her eyes crinkling on the sides just like Ron's, when he smiles. She looks back at me, frowning. "How come I've never seen this picture before, Mum?"

I smile back at her, recognizing the Color Line on her forehead again. It only appears when she is trying to work out something especially difficult; in this case, she is probably trying to do what many people in the past have tried to do: decipher the mystery of me and Ron. How we ended up together when we seem so different.

Not a chance, I could tell her. Smarter witches than you have failed. Voldemort failed. They have a whole section at the Department of Mysteries devoted to the human heart, but they'll never crack it. Mattie lives to work out problems, to interpret the solutions for others through her beautiful paintings. But she'll never work this one out.

Instead I say, "Your father and I have our little secrets, don't we?"

Mattie nods, handing the picture back to me after a final glance. The line still creases her forehead; she has another question. "Mum," she says. She's whispering. "Can I ask you something else?"

"Yes."

"Are you happy you married Dad?"

I smile and answer without hesitation, "Yes, I am."


End file.
